New Delhi: Tainted and now debarred from service, former trainee IAS officer Puja Khedkar has shaken the entire UPSC as she managed to hoodwink the country's top most Public Service Commission with fake credentials to avail more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE Rules.
34-year-old Puja Khedkar, who was serving in Maharashtra as a trainee IAS officer, was in the eye of a storm over the alleged misuse of power which saw her being transferred from Pune to Washim after she was seen using an Audi car with a siren and VIP number plate.
On Wednesday, the Union Public Service Commission said it had examined the available records carefully and found Puja guilty of acting in contravention of the provisions of the CSE-2022 Rules. "Her provisional candidature for the CSE-2022 has been cancelled and she has also been debarred permanently from all the future Examinations/Selections of the UPSC," the UPSC said in a statement.'
The Commission revealed some shocking information about how Puja managed to avail more number of attempts by changing her name and even her parent's name while applying for the exhaustive Civil Services several times over the years.
A 2023-batch IAS officer who secured an all-India rank (AIR) 841 in the UPSC exam, Puja Khedkar comes from a high-profile family. Her father, Dilip Khedkar, is a retired administrative officer.
While the UPSC said it could not determine how many attempts she had made, reports say Puja attempted the examination 12 times. For general category, the maximum number of attempts in UPSC exams is 6, while for OBC it is 9.
The UPSC, in its statement said, it thoroughly examined data of more than 15,000 candidates who had been recommended by UPSC from 2009 till 2023 with respect to the number of attempts availed by them, and found out that except Puja Khedkar, no other candidate has been found to have availed more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE Rules.
"In the lone case of Ms. Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of the UPSC could not detect her number of attempts primarily due to the fact that she changed not only her name but also her parents’ name. The UPSC is in the process of further strengthening the SOP to ensure that such a case does not recur in the future," the Commission said in its statement.
As far as the complaints regarding the submission of false certificates (specifically OBC & PwBD categories) are concerned, the UPSC said it does only a preliminary scrutiny of the certificates (whether the certificate has been issued by the competent authority, the year to which the certificate pertains, issuing date of the certificate, whether there is any overwriting on the certificate, format of the certificate etc).
" Generally, the certificate is taken as genuine, if it has been issued by the competent authority. The UPSC neither has the mandate nor the wherewithal to check the veracity of thousands of certificates submitted by the candidates every year. However, it is understood that scrutiny and verification of genuineness of certificates is carried out by the authorities mandated with the task," the UPSC said.
